IBM Bets on Cognitive Computing

LAS VEGAS—IBM is putting all its chips into the cognitive computing pot at its PartnerWorld Leadership Conference here this week.

"Cognitive computing, and Watson in particular, are becoming the essence of transformation at IBM," IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said during her keynote address here.

According to Rometty, IBM is betting the company on cognitive computing in the cloud, dedicating its 54 cloud data centers to support Bluemix—the dashboard for Watson's cognitive computing capabilities and application programmer interfaces (APIs).

Rometty said the architectural changes made by Bluemix at IBM would trickle-down to influence everything downstream in computing.

"There are three areas affecting all businesses today—one is the need for new architectures like the open worldwide data platform in the cloud offered by Bluemix and Watson,” she said.

She predicted that one billion users from 45 countries in 20 industries would be using the Bluemix model by the end of 2017. By 2022, every decision made by consumers will be influenced by this model, she added.

And as the knowledge base of known valid solutions to everything from medical conditions to cybersecurity grows, the movers and the shakers writing those apps will become the world's leading companies, Rometty predicted.

IBM claims it is already opening a $2 trillion market for using cognitive computing for decision support by 2025, and another $1.5 trillion market in increased productivity by 2020. SOURCE: IBMClick here for larger image

IBM also announced a "Watson Build Challenge" to kick-off efforts to open the cognitive-market to all by challenging users to contribute IBM tested and verified apps on the IBM market place site, which previously had only IBM-written Watson apps.

The Watson Build Challenge will allow anyone, from the top 45 Fortune 50 companies already on-board to the smallest startups, to participate. The effort was modeled on an internal contest where all 380,000 IBM employees were asked to build a Watson app last year. The winners of that contest now have their apps for sale on the IBM Marketplace. Winners are expected to be announced by the end of this year.

For medical applications, the difference between machine learning, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing is, for example, the ability to detect a tumor from x-rays (machine learning), to the ability to detect cancer before the tumor grows by analyzing the dynamic flow of blood in vessels/capillaries to the ability to comparing the above data with that of every cured case of cancer from the relevant literature to accurately diagnosis and ultimately cure it. SOURCE: IBMClick here for larger image

"We now have about 70 percent of our data center workloads running IBM APIs with about 30 percent of all Bluemix calls going to Watson," said Dave Wilson, vice president of IBM cloud business partners and channel innovation, in an exclusive interview with EE Times. "BlueMix is being used for Watson and IoT apps of all sorts and sizes."

Wilson echoed Rometty in confirming that IBM is putting all of its eggs into the cognitive basket. Not only is IBM selling BlueMix and its Watson links to its partners to develop their own apps, but almost 30 percent of its partners are selling BlueMix to their customers to run their built-for-purpose solutions, he said.

The Watson platform (details pictured) hosted in IBM's BlueMix cloud, is the company-wide strategy to keep itself not just relevant but ahead of the pack in the 21st century. SOURCE: IBMClick here for larger image

What Amazon [or for that matter Microsoft] offers is the cloud service or platform which is AWS. What IBM is offering is congnitive computing which runs on cloud. There is a big difference. It might be good for you to check out the capabilities of Watson.

You are too defensive about your article. Nobody is attacking you. You just reported what the CEO of IBM said. I'm attacking IBM and these ridiculous claims sir.

But then you defended IBM and said the game isn't over. I think it's over. Do you really want AWS, Microsoft, and Google having a laser focus on your biz? Yeah, that's easy to beat, I have Watson backing me up.

Look at IBM annual reports in 2011 and 2012 and you'll see CEO Ginni Rometty casually dismiss cloud, barely mentioning the word in each of her first two letters. The planning and priority of IBM management back then, if you'll recall, revolved around a $20 earnings per share "road map".

The Hyperscalers are the efficient cloud providers. That's AWS, Microsoft, and Google.

You need to understand the massive scale of these Hyperscale datacenter companies. They have more services and capabilites than IBM has ever even thought about.

You are right of course, IBM thinks its every expanding cognitive computing empire built on Watson is what will make the difference. It is uncanny the intelligent conversations you can have with Watson. Why not sign up for a 30-day free trial and ask Watson why IBM thinks it will beat Google, Amazon and Microsoft:
https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/watson-analytics/purchase?

Yes, I agree that IBM is making a mistake. What did you think I meant by using phrases like "putting all eggs in one basket" or "putting all its chips into the cognitive computing pot"? The connotations of both phrases are negative, just said in a polite way. You're always at the mercy of luck when you do so. But I don't agree the game is over, just because IBM is taking a gigantic risk. Time will tell--not anecdotal information and gut-feelings.

There's nothing in here about how IBM is better than AWS or Google in any way. Everything here is just sales driven, not engineering driven. And in this day and age, and with such tough competitors, i'm not sure that's enough.

As I said, IBM is betting its whole company on cognitive computing based on partnerships with the world's 20th biggest industries. If 7/8th of the rest of the world's customers choose Google and Microsoft instead, then IBM still wins. If Watson is not attractive enough to win over that many users, then its all-eggs-in-one-basket will fail. Anecdotal evidence aside its winning so far.

I'm really curious what truly differentiates this from Amazon cloud or Microsoft cloud or Google cloud. Isn't there really a race to the bottom in pricing? Isn't AWS the undisputed monster top dog leader in this space? They have the major muscle to support high user demand. And they do it right.

Check out this Watching IBM link to really understand the truth about IBM. The employees there hate the CEO, executive management, BOD, and are miserable.

https://www.facebook.com/alliancemember/

Why can't the "movers and shakers" write apps on AWS or Azure?

I think IBM is way behind and falling further behind. Do you really want to do biz with a company that has so many demoralized employees?

This "one billion users" is a pretty bold statement. 1/7th of the worlds population? I find that hard to believe. I'd like to see some evidence to back that number up.